Why Should the US Support the UN?

It’s past time the United States seriously considers getting out of the United Nations. Not long ago it was only our right-wing fringe that argued for pulling out of the U.N. No longer.Even the Lunatic Left has begun to notice the UN is nothing but a useless (and expensive) debating society. After all, it was created in 1945, not with our mere blessing but, largely, at our urging even though our principal authors were Communist Spies infiltrated into the highest levels of our government. Recall Algier Hiss?

For the past 58 years, the U.N. has had a poor and mixed role in the prevention and resolution of conflicts. It has, however, served well as a mere debating society whose members were just as likely to ignore as to adhere to the covenants, declarations and resolutions they actually voted to adopt. Recall Korea? Afghanistan? Rwanda? Yugoslavia? The 1st. Gulf War? The list is lengthy.

It is equally interesting and discouraging to note the UN Human Rights Comminssion rarely was able to reach consensus about even the most grotesque violations in countries such as China or Cuba or Saudi Arabia but the commission members had no trouble at all condemning the United States for its alleged transgressions, especially our supposed racism. Among the 18 members, only the British, Ukrainian and Belgian representatives have been stalwart friends. Linda Chavez reports that “even the Belgian representative reflected his personal rather than his government’s views, which he was entitled to do since each … was supposed to act as ‘independent’ experts.” The French have always been viscerally hostile to anything American; the Latin Americans are usually merely cowardly; the Africans, East Europeans and Arabs, normally duplicitous.

None of the recent U.N. back-stabbing over Iraq should surprise us. The real question is “WHY do we put up with it?” What has the United Nations accomplished that we could not or have not already done on our own? The Gulf War, though sanctioned by the U.N., was almost entirely an American effort, with the usual help from the Brits and a handful of other Western, Christian, and debtor nations.

The U.N. failed miserably in preventing the horrible mass murders in Rwanda, the Balkans, Cambodia and elsewhere nor open slavery in the Sudan. It has been totally ineffective in promoting peace in the Middle East. It has engaged in numerous vicious slurs against Israel and the US while coddling such thugs as Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein. It has yet to prevent any form of terrorism anywhere in the world. Nor does it actually support Human Rights anywhere.

Meanwhile, the United States bears a ridiculous share of the cost of operating the United Nations, 25%. The U.N. assesses dues based on the member country’s relative share of the world’s economy, a wonderfully socialist idea imbraced by the 3rd world. Since the American economy represents about a quarter of the world’s economy, we pay 25 percent of the costs of running the bloated, corrupt, and frequently immoral scofflaws of the U.N. bureaucracy.

We share an even greater burden of the U.N. peacekeeping and humanitarian budgets. The United State’s refusal to pay its full (over)dues – as much as a half billion dollars in arears – causes a great deal consternation and condemnation by supposed elite opinion leaders both here and abroad. Witness Dippy Daschle’s recent criticisms and the biased press coverage given by the big 3 News Networks.

An American Enterprise Institute scholar, Joshua Muravchik, published in the Wall Street Journal this week, stated that France’s veto threat actually rescued the United States from a serious blunder. He claimed “a presumption that Security Council approval is the necessary prerequisite for the use of American force abroad would have posed incalculable dangers to world peace in the long term” and would have been the inevitable result of awaiting the French response.

I believe Muravchik correct. Simply put, the best way to avoid the temptation to simply wait on some UN approval of any other moral or correct action in the future would be to withdraw our support from the UN altogether. Kick them out of NY. If we aren’t prepared to do that, we could at least continue to withhold payments, give U.N. ambassador John Negroponte a new job, one actually befitting his talents, and downgrade our representation and participation in this feckless institution. The pretense that the United Nations is actually worthy of even our qualified support is simply not in our nation’s best interest.

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